After two albums, Todd Rundgren had one hit and a burgeoning cult following, plus growing respect as a hitmaking record producer. There's no question he was busy, but as it turns out, all this work only scratched the surface of his ambition….

THE DEVIL RIDES OUT is a power packed with 1970s heavy metal and leaves no stone unturned. If you like classic heavy metal, then you cannot afford to miss out on this album. This album comes straight from the heart of all four musicians that are part of it, and it connects to directly to the listener's heart.

This CD is quite a bit different than most audiophile releases for it contains rare rather than famous recordings. 1959's The Fourth Herd (which features an all-star group of studio musicians and Woody Herman alumni along with his octet of the time) was only put out briefly by Jazzland while the music on 1962's The New World of Woody Herman was never available commercially before; both were originally cut for the SESAC Transcribed Library and were available only to selected radio stations on a subscription basis…

Billed as the first official collection of live bootleg recordings, the triple-disc For Lack of Honest Work is a live anthology stretching back to live-in-the-studio recordings of “It Wouldn’t Have Made Any Difference” and “Broke Down and Busted” in Philadelphia from 1971 and running all the way to 2006, when Todd belts out “I Hate My Frickin’ ISP” in Toronto. In between these extremes are many other extremes – Todd indulging in the early days of Utopia, cuts from his A Cappella tour, a doo wop arrangement of “Real Man,” a synthesized piss-take of “Bang on the Drum,” a solo electric “Hammer in Your Heart,” slickly accomplished on-stage jamming – all loosely arranged so the first disc contains the poppiest material, the second the proggiest, the third his mature phase. It’s not quite a straight-on realist portrait but a hazy abstract impression of Todd’s multifaceted abilities, with the overall range being somewhat more impressive than individual moments.

There's little question that A Day in the Life of Todd Terry is one of the best albums of Terry's pioneering house ever released – it leads off with two of his best-known tracks, "A Day in the Life" and "I Hear the Music." And the rest of this compilation just reinforces his status as one of the best house producers of all time, from the uplifting vibes of "Clear Away the Past" and the tribal headrush of "Jungle Hot" to smoother tracks like "Teela's Theme".